Standing on the steep, ever-eroding dirt banks of the Kamchatka River one is struck by the river's strength and aloofness. A wide conveyor of deep water slides silently by and only the occasional snag interrupts the smoothness of the surface and betrays the true speed at which the great mass is moving.

The water is, as in most Kamchatkan rivers, intolerably cold, even in summer. An unplanned dip midstream in the Kamchatka often results in death from hypothermia or drowning.  Despite this fact, locals from the village of Kozyrevsk claim that in Soviet times young men from the village would celebrate Youth Day (which takes place in June) by drinking a glass of vodka (or perhaps two but who was counting?) and swimming across the mighty river, which is about 200 meters wide at that point. At the far banking they would have a refill and swim back. 

Swimming, while not advisable unless one is Russian and inebriated, is a surer way to cross the Kamchatka River than looking for a bridge: there is only one along the whole 758 km length of the river (image 1).   It is located 14 km (9 mi) south of the village of Milkovo at a point where the river is still less than 100 meters wide.  Incidentally, the bridge is quite near the site of the very first Russian fort on the peninsula (see Kamchatka River (part 1)) – all traces of which have been erased by flooding. The old fort has been replaced in the present day by a police checkpoint, strategically placed to intercept all cars on the only road to villages further north.

Further down river all crossings, there are four, are handled by ferry (image 2). Two service the main road which runs from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to the village of Ust-Kamchatsk (translated: “Mouth of the Kamchatka”) on the Pacific Ocean, while two service two small villages on the river’s east bank: Lazo, and Tayozhny.

Another surefire way to cross the Kamchatka is to patiently wait till winter. The rivers of northern Kamchatka begin to freeze as early as the beginning of October and thaw only in early May.  In the milder south, rivers start to ice over in December and thaw in April (image 3). On the Kamchatka River the ice is usually thick enough to cross by car in the early part of December. At this time of year locals, tired of waiting for the always sporadic ferry service, generally pack an unsanctioned winter road across the river at a time when the ferry, yet to be pulled out of the river for the winter, is still plowing a channel through the ice. Deeper into the winter the ice reaches a depth of 30 to 150 cm (12 to 60 in) and the government opens a plowed, maintained, ice bridge at each crossing.